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Ruth and the Sense of Self: Midrash and Difference.

From: Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life andThought  |  Date: 3/22/1999  |  Author: MORGENSTERN, MIRA

THE DANGER WITH WELL-KNOWN STORIES IS THAT WE read the narrative we have come to expect, instead of what is actually written in the text. So it is with the Book of Ruth: we are all familiar with the story of the widowed stranger who loyally follows her bereft mother-in-law to find happiness and acceptance in a strange land, and becomes the matriarch of the Davidic dynasty. In this traditional recapitulation, the Book of Ruth nicely fits the romantic "stranger at the gates" typology ...

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